


Don't Let Me Go

by MrsStylinson



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: And More Angst, Angst, M/M, Non AU, Pining, Reality Fic, and I made up a radio station, sam mccarthy doesn't exist in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3392810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsStylinson/pseuds/MrsStylinson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry gets the short end of the stick when Louis gets together with Eleanor and breaks his heart. He does a Taylor Swift and writes about it. He'll keep his arms wide open Louis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit depresso but I guess life is a bit like that. The ending is open ended though and that's why its a reality fic, things change and people change and nothing is as fixed as we'd like it to be but hey, sometimes it's a good thing.

It’s a quarter to one and he is ambling through the apartment, a deadened and blank feeling settling between his shoulders as he makes it to the kitchen and stumbles into the corner of the bench. Louis cringes and then runs a hand through his growing hair that takes more effort to contain than Harry’s these days. The thought of Harry lays there begging for attention as he pulls a much needed beer from El’s fridge and takes a long swig. Perhaps it’s that which finds him sliding his hand down his boxer briefs in search of the phone that isn’t there.

Louis creeps into El’s room and finds her snoring softly in her sleep, a trait that doesn’t quite fit with her image as a petite, ladylike model which is why he takes every opportunity to tease her for it. Her dark hair is splayed out across the pillow and a small fond smile makes its way onto Louis’ face. He’s not proud of the situation he’s placed her in but then, she signed up willingly enough, even suggesting the idea of twin beds which Louis vetoed quickly. He’s not that much of a prick that he can’t handle sharing a bed and perhaps there are nights that he even needs to hear that soft snoring in the dark like a reminder that this is his life now. It’s a reminder that he can’t simply retrace his steps to his x factor days. Sighing, Louis extracts his phone from the bedside table and carries it downstairs where he also retrieves his beer. Now the stage is set for a pity party of one as he lounges on the dark grey recliner and quickly locates Harry’s twitter. 

Some days it feels like this is his only connection to him, the only way of keeping up with his life when he’s not in the same vicinity. It doesn’t offer much in the way of consolation given the way he used to know the ins and outs of it. No, they’d never consummated anything properly but if the scorching way that Harry had kissed him had been anything to go by, his hips forever pressing into Louis body as if he itched to go further, then it would have been fucking brilliant. Another long pull of the beer and Louis eyes are drawn to a recent tweet of Harry’s that’s been posted a minute ago that simply denotes, “AM music x.” With a puzzled twist to his face, Louis makes his way back into the kitchen, twisting the dial on the old and mostly unused radio in the corner of El’s kitchen. He flinches guiltily as the static erupts loudly and echoes throughout the apartment. Lucky El is a deep sleeper and no answering noises are heard from upstairs. Louis’ eyes narrow with concentration as he plays with the dial until the correct station number flashes up on the small, darkly lit, green screen. 

“And now for an exclusive treat! We have one Mr. Harry Styles here to perform his new and until now, unheard solo single don’t let me go! That’s right, you heard correctly, this young man is stepping out on his own, temporarily I might add, having written this song and right here now, on AM music, you’re about to hear it for the first time!” The presenter describes with an impressive amount of enthusiasm.  
Louis’ whole body is still as he wonders how Harry managed to keep this from everyone and why he did so. His heart beats out of time as Harry thanks the presenter (Justin) for the introduction and takes a deep but laboured breath. Louis can hear the nerves in that breath in the same way he could hear danger in the sound of a fire alarm. He closes his eyes and exhales loudly as he remembers the way he used to comfort Harry, the way Harry’s cheeks would transition from snowy with a tint of green to rosy pink as Louis rucked his shirt up at the back and pulled him into his own body, kissing him with the kind of rigour that made his own eyelashes flutter as he fought the urge to hike a leg up around Harry’s waist. 

As Harry’s voice comes over the station, Louis limbs feel suddenly disconnected. It shouldn’t be all that surprising as Harry’s voice has always weakened him, perhaps because it’s inextricably linked with burning intense looks and more recently, quick glances that Louis can barely hope to return before Harry has turned away but the sensation is worse this time. Harry’s voice is rough with intensity and emotion and it takes Louis back to the night he told Harry about El. That night Harry’s voice was just as thick with emotion and longing as he buried his curls in Louis’ neck and begged him not to do this, begged him to tell management where they could stick it. And Louis, the selfish coward that he’d been had told him that he just wasn’t ready, that he needed more time. Harry had walked out that night with this expression in his eyes that Louis never forgot, as though the teddy he’d once loved had grown fangs and bitten him. Boobear had betrayed him and Harry had been lost to him ever since.  
Louis feels the memories that have ravaged him must have taken up at least ten minutes but he finds Harry’s voice still reasonably tentative as it always is when he begins. Louis clutches the beer in his hand tighter listening to the haunting and sad melody filling his ears thinking only of those two green eyes that used to hang on his every word with admiration. He’s never felt worse.

“I saw in a corner there is a photograph, no doubt in my mind it’s a picture of you,” Harry rasps.  
A reel of images appears in Louis mind like clockwork and he is helpless to stop himself as he flicks through, the pain rising in his throat. The initial ones are of Harry the way he used to be, 16 and barely able to utter the word ‘gay’ as he showed Louis a kind of unearned affection that he’d never known. He’d been so eager to be Louis’ partner in crime and that’s where it had begun. Yet it was Harry that had begun to stare at him so openly, unabashed, finding ways to touch him whenever he could. The fans had seen something between them that Louis was unprepared to succumb to yet but as more images flood him, he remembers the way he had as Harry had come to terms with himself. He’d pressed himself closer and closer to Louis until keeping him at bay had begun to feel like holding his breath. He opened up a crack in his exterior, letting a few drops of liquid through as he let himself return Harry’s looks, his beautiful crooked smiles and found himself casually dropping innuendos, no particular thought for the consequences.   
Their first kiss had been much like that, a spontaneous move on Louis behalf as Harry had moved past him after a particularly long interview filled with intensely charged stares and secretive smiles. Louis remembers the way he grabbed him around the wrist and Harry’s arms came around him without hesitation, as if he’d only been waiting for the crack to open up (pun intended) so he could pour through, and pour through he had as they’d started a passionate and sometimes irrational relationship. Yet the last images that appear press hard against the front of his forehead like bruises he forgot were there; Harry begging him to confront his fears, Louis continued refusals and never to be forgotten, the distance that had filled Harry’s eyes from the moment Louis had divulged Modest’s plan. Blinking back to the present, Louis finds that once again time has barely passed and he digs his nails into the skin on his arm to punish himself for letting that torture unfold.

His heart which has been frozen in that state Harry had left it that night years ago begins to unfreeze with the lyrics Harry sings because suddenly this song and its secrecy doesn’t seem all that strange. Suddenly the words Harry sings loom before him like a prison sentence he can’t even begin to argue with.  
“I’ll keep my eyes wide open, I’ll keep my arms wide open. Don’t let me go, don’t let me go, don’t let me go cause I’m tired of feeling alone,” are the words that are falling from Harry’s full lips in a studio somewhere that Louis imagines with vivid detail.  
His eyes are burning with an intensity only Harry could inspire and yet this is not passion or affection. This is devastation. This is what it feels like to know Harry is miserable, to feel every inch of Harry’s pain as his own as he soulfully tells Louis that he’s still waiting. Louis finds his head in his hands and can’t even remember how it got there. As he shifts his foot, he feels broken glass and spreading liquid beneath him but none of it matters. Not when Harry is serenading him with the most heart wrenching outcry of hurt that Louis has ever had to listen to. His fingers twitch, aching to just turn the radio off, to stem the flow of pain that is now making its way through his veins but he can’t bring himself to do it. He owes Harry this. 

“Seems like these days I watch you from afar, just trying to make you understand” are the lyrics that inspire a single broken sob, a sob that Louis has never let escape, not since he was a vulnerable little boy with no reason to temper his emotions. It’s the way Harry sings it, with more power and longing than any other line, the raspy sound of his voice giving way to a quieter softer sound on the word “understand.” That’s about when the sob breaks through Louis’ composure. He permits himself a second to revisit the actual last time he really interacted with Harry with any kind of genuine emotion.

They’d been in interviews all day, Louis answering questions about his new relationship with Eleanor every few interviews. They’d been “together” a few months now and Modest had advised him not to make too much of a song and dance about expressing his “love” but had explicitly warned him that any acknowledgment of Harry’s presence when these questions were asked was forbidden. It had been the last interview of the day when Louis was tired and his defences down and the interviewer had asked him how things were going with Eleanor. It had been a second, if not less, that his eyes had been on Harry but the green of Harry’s eyes lightened and he found a smile sneaking its way onto his own face as he swiftly the answered the question. Fortunately, it had been subtle enough that he hadn’t been reprimanded but as he’d stumbled off the stage, suddenly fatigued, Harry’s big hand had closed around his, pulling him to a stop as he too came down off the stage. Harry hadn’t spoken to him outside of an interview since that fateful night and Louis must have looked pathetically hopeful as he reached up and pulled a hand through Harry’s curls.  
Harry removed his hand after a moment but didn’t release it.

“Harry-“ Louis began, unsure how to proceed but certain that he could persuade Harry to just talk to him so that maybe he could convince him that they could still be together.  
“Lou,” Harry interrupted, his voice so soft and sad that Louis’ hand tightened automatically around his.  
“I’m in love with you,” he had said, his eyes looming large in his face, “don’t do this.”  
Louis’ heart bled with that confession. He longed to kiss away the uncertainty on Harry’s face, to tell him that of course he loved him too. He’d been in love all this time and hadn’t Harry known that? Hadn’t Harry seen it in his eyes? But instead, his frustration spilled over.  
“Don’t do what?” He said sharply, “I love you Harry but you’re the one leaving.”  
Harry’s face looked equal parts amazed and broken. Louis reached up and touched the side of his face but Harry shook his hand away, his eyes burning. Fear pooled in Louis stomach as Harry looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Then he moved forward and cupped Louis’ face in his large hands, prying Louis’ lips apart with his own. Louis sagged into the kiss, groaning a little as Harry’s tongue traced his bottom lip. Yet no sooner had he begun to hope than Harry pulled away and whispered a tortured plea in his ear.  
“Don’t let me go,” he’d said before turning and exiting the room without one look back to gauge the fallout.  
And had he looked back, he would have seen the stunned expression on Louis’ face, the whiplash that remained for days afterward until he decided once and for all that Harry was asking for a kind of courage he did not possess. Those words had been pushed further and further into the back of his mind until now, until Harry’s pained voice had dredged them up like the remains of a shipwreck that had sunk long ago.   
He willed himself to hold in the sobs as the song drew to a close and he returned to his phone, silent tears falling from his eyes and making blurry puddles on the screen. Harry’s twitter stared up at him and he sagged back against the bench as he read another tweet.  
“I’ll keep my arms wide open.”

He clenched his eyes tight as tears still squeezed out the sides and tried to fight the tsunami of buried pain that threatened to overwhelm him. Once they’d been Larry Stylinson, the dream team, the bromance turned romance, two of the most famous boys in the whole world who just happened to fall in love with each other without intention. But no longer is Louis a bright eyed, bushy tailed 18 year old with no awareness of what lays in wait. Louis has been places, seen many things and he knows how fragile it all is, how one statement, one confession, one relationship, could see this experience come crumbling down around him.   
He flicks through the reel of images in his head more slowly this time, allowing the tears to fall, lingering on the moments that hurt the most because he deserves that. He owes Harry his pain. Then he does what he’s always done, he puts the pictures back in the box labelled Harry and seals it, pushing it to the darkest corner of his mind. If only Harry knew, he’s not letting him go, he never did let go because he has to hold onto that box so tight just to stop the memories from spilling out. He feels something threaten every time he’s faced with Harry, every time he hears Harry sing, every time Harry’s eyes fall near him, fall on him. He’s not ready to say those words, to be those words in front of the whole wide world but there are words that he can’t deny, words that won’t be sealed in a box and hidden away, words that are as clear as day as he continues to stare at Harry’s tweet; “I will always and forever be in love with one Harry Edward Styles.”


End file.
